Eye Opener: Online Learning Activities

1. Abby's Earth Experiment Learning Activity-

"For this activity you will need a straw.  A cocktail straw is best, but you could also grab a straw from the food court if you don't have one on hand at home.  Here's how you begin:
1. Breath through the straw for 30 seconds.  Has breathing become harder?  How much more restricted do your airways feel?
2. Take away the straw and recognize how easy it is to breath again.  Did you immediately desire to gasp for a deep breath?
3. For 1 minute either run in place or do jumping jacks.
4. Immediately following that minute breath through the straw for as long as possible.  How long did you last before gasping for air? Did you notice how such a little amount of exercise made breathing so difficult?"

So the only straw I could find in my house was one of those REALLY long stiff ones that goes into those $15 water bottles you buy at Valley Fair when you're dying of thirst and the disposable ones are like $7.50 so you decide to splurge and get the one you can refill!  I don't know if this worked for, or against me... Breathing through it was not very fun in the first place because I have a fear of suffocating.  Then I ran up and down my stairs 6 times! Woah, trying to breathe out of then was like... well I guess it was like breathing out of a straw after running up and down your stairs 6 times, not cool!
Being one of those darn ex-smokers I can totally relate to this... I started smoking at very young ago socially, and whenever I would be snowboarding and think I was all cool on the chairlift having a cig then try to hike up the park afterwards I could definitely tell that I was killing my lungs!  So I have actually done this experiment in life, which is kinda like a slap in the face... some of the things you do when you're young and dumb.

2. Danielle's Discoveries Online Learning Activity
  For Danielle's experiment she posted 3 videos and ask questions afterward that I was asked to respond to...
1. After seeing this video, how do you feel about the fact that this whole European program, creating better sanitation for all, is developed and carried out by women?
     I feel very empowered to be a woman today... it is amazing how far we have come in advancing our statuses in the world, it doesn't surprise me though that woman are behind advocacy for sanitation though.  We tend to be more clean and worry about "less important" things like this!
2. The 2nd video didn't work for me... :/
But after watching the 2nd video about the tomato farmer's losing all that money from the E. Coli scare it just reminds me about how much trust people put in our gov't... so many people put their responsibilities and trust in the hands of the gov't so when they say "don't eat tomatoes" it takes those farmers a long time to recover from an incident like that.  The worst part is that it wasn't even the tomatoes that were causing the problem, it was the jalapenos.  I can understand why those farmers would be upset and why they expected reimbursement!


Pam